Unforgotten(109)

“I can’t,” I whisper hoarsely, trying not to throw up from the dizziness. “I can’t do it.”

And suddenly I understand what Alixter meant when he said scramble. Kaelen warned me his mind would be incomprehensible but I never expected this. It’s pure chaos. I’ll never be able to find anything in here. And certainly not before our tracking devices grow back, or the med bot returns.

“Sera,” Kaelen urges. “You have to try.”

I cringe and dive back into the disorder, allowing myself to be swept up in the churning of faces and landscapes and mathematical equations. As the imagery whirls by, I try to catch a single memory and hold on to it long enough to see it and possibly classify it.

But no matter how hard I try, nothing works.

I glance down at my wrist. The bleeding has stopped. A thin scab has already started to form.

I want to cry in frustration. I have to find it! I have to figure out what Rio did with those other two doses.

But that’s like trying to find one droplet of water in a stormy ocean. I’m sorting through a lifetime of memories here. Memories that have been completely muddled by Alixter’s Modifier.

I reach out and grab Rio’s hand, holding it tightly. “Rio,” I plead. “Can you hear me? Does any part of you know that I’m even here? It’s me, Sera. Please. I need your help. I need to find the two doses of the repressor that Maxxer left you. You have to remember what you did with them.”

I stare at his lifeless face, frozen in time. His unblinking eyes. His slightly agape mouth.

I get no response.

I think back to the memory of the night Rio gave me the transession gene. The night I asked him to erase all my memories and give me a fresh start.

I remember the way he looked at me. With such sadness in his eyes. Such remorse.

“I’m sorry about everything. Everything I did to you,” he said to me.

And then I called him something. Something I’ve never been able to call anyone. And I never will.

“Dad,” I whisper aloud now, tears streaming down my cheeks. “He’s going to die. I can’t let that happen. I love him. Please help me.”

Something happens then. For just a moment, the briefest flit of a moment, the disorderly bustle of memories slows to a stop. As though someone turned off the power that was fueling them. The earsplitting noise mutes into a hushed garble.

“Look!” Kaelen whispers.

I lift my gaze to see Rio’s eyes flutter closed and then open again. Just once.

“I think he can hear you!” Kaelen adds.

A single moving picture rises to the surface. Floats upward, through the chaos, through the wreckage of his mind, and lingers in front of me.

It’s a picture of a girl. A young girl. She looks to be about the same age as Jane. Maybe five or six.

She jumps up and down giddily on a springy bed. Laughing and kicking the air between each bounce.

A deep voice booms out, frightening her. I recognize it immediately as Rio’s. “I hope you’re not jumping on the bed again,” it warns.

The little girl immediately falls to her knees and clambers under the covers. Giggling quietly to herself. She looks innocently at the open doorway. At Rio. Her big brown eyes shining.

“No more monkeys jumping on the bed.” She sings the familiar tune. The one he taught her. It’s her favorite.

His heart melts. And despite his earlier warning tone, he can’t stay mad.

“It’s way past your bedtime,” Rio says. Softly. Tenderly.

“One story,” the girl bargains.

Rio relents with a sigh. He can’t say no to her. He never could.

“Fine,” he says. “Which one?”

She flashes him a look that he knows all too well. He translates it as Don’t be silly.

“Of course,” he answers, and he pulls a worn, tattered green book from a table near the bed.

As he brings it over to her, the title flashes into view.

The Giving Tree.

He sits down on the bed and the little girl snuggles up close to him, entwining her little body in his arm. He flips open the book and begins to read aloud.

“Once there was a tree…” He turns the page.

“Can I turn?” she asks hopefully.

“Okay,” he allows. “But remember, you have to be very careful. This book is older than I am.”

“That’s old,” she says wisely.

He tickles her, pretending to be angry.

Her giggles echo around the pink bedroom, louder than they should. Until everything fades into white and her joyful high-pitched laughter is all I can hear.

The raucous, deafening noise returns an instant later, banging into my head. Followed quickly by the chaotic swirl of images.

I open my eyes and stare at Rio, wondering who that girl was. Wondering how much about this man I don’t know. Probably everything.